In truth, the Vegas of today resembles little the Vegas of yesteryear, on the surface, anyway. But one needs only stroll through the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas to remind them of “Sin City’s” not-too-distant past.
There the names Meyer Lansky, “Bugsy” Siegel, Gus Greenbaum, and Moe Sedway aren’t torn from newspaper headlines or the pages of True Crime magazine, they represent the long list of criminals legitimized to accommodate the building of a city in the middle of the Mojave Desert to systematically fleece railroad workers and dam builders of their hard-earned pay by supplying what they’d be most willing to pay for: sex, gambling, and drugs.
For the best part of a century, Vegas functioned as a largely autonomous, mob-owned business venture where crime ran rampant, and criminals acted with impunity. Not until the 1980s did Organized crime finally loosen its hold.
Rising From the Desert
The settlement of Las Vegas, Nevada, was founded in 1905 following the opening of a railroad that linked Los Angeles, CA, and Salt Lake City, UT.
At first little more than a rest stop, Las Vegas began attracting farmers (primarily from Utah) once fresh water was piped in. Water availability in the middle of the desert allowed Las Vegas to become a water stop: first for wagon trains, then railroads connecting Los Angeles and points east.
In 1911 the tiny town was incorporated into newly-founded Clark County.
For a while, two towns were named “Las Vegas.” The east side of Las Vegas, which encompassed modern Main Street and Las Vegas Boulevard, was owned by US Senator William Andrews Clark (the majority investor of the railroad), while the west side of Las Vegas, which encompassed the area north of modern-day Bonanza Road, was owned by surveyor J.T. McWilliams, who purchased a section of land after being paid to survey it. It was the latter Las Vegas that we know today.
Ironically, for a city always known for its vices, on October 1, 1910, the State of Nevada outlawed gambling (the last western state to do so), and ten years later, a nationwide constitutional law prohibiting the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages went into effect in the US.
If either law had remained in place, it’s unlikely that either Las Vegas would have survived.
“Sin City”
By 1906, and the opening of the railroad that linked Nevada to California, an area known as Block 16 (and nearby Block 17), located on First Street between Ogden and Stewart Avenues, had already become known as an oasis for alcohol and prostitution, known as “Sin City.”
The first of the Las Vegas establishments granted a license to legally sell liquor, saloons like the Arizona Club sold drinks to railroad workers and rented out backrooms to prostitutes where customers could be serviced 24/7 for a percentage of their earnings.
By 1912, despite the state-wide outlawing of gambling, the Arizona Club became a gaming hall boasting “all vices are fully available.” Thus, the Arizona Club (and several other less conspicuous Las Vegas establishments) was invested in gambling nearly two decades before it was legal in the state of Nevada, and so-called “Organized Crime” cut themselves in.
